News

The Appellate Panel of Section I for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, following a session, on 16 August 2013 sent out the second-instance verdict in Duško Jević et al. refusing as ill-founded the appeal filed by the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while partly granting the appeals filed by the defense counsel for the Accused Duško Jević and Mendeljev Đurić. In that regard, the first-instance verdict of the Court of BiH dated 25 May 2012 has been revised in the sentencing part, so that, concerning the criminal offense of Genocide (Article 171 a) and b) of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as read with Article 180(1) and Article 31 of the BiH Criminal Code), of which he has been found guilty, the Accused Duško Jević is now sentenced to 32 years of long-term imprisonment. Regarding the criminal offense of Genocide (Article 171 a) and b) of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as read with Article 180(1) and Article 31 of the Criminal Code of BiH), of which he has been found guilty, the Accused Mendeljev Đurić is now sentenced to 28 years of long-term imprisonment. The first-instance verdict was upheld in the remaining part.

The Accused were found guilty of the charges that, between 10 and 19 July 1995, they, specifically:

Duško Jević, as an assistant commander of the RS Police Special Brigade and the commander of the Jahorina Special Police Brigade Training Center, and

Mendeljev Đurić as the commander of the Jahorina Training Center I Company,

knowingly aided and abetted members of the joint criminal enterprise, including GŠ VRS officers and senior VRS Security officers, as well as other members of the Republika Srpska military and civilian leadership. They acted with the intent to partly exterminate a group of Bosniak people, by carrying out a forcible transfer of some 40,000 women, children and elderly, and summary execution of between 7,000 and 8,000 Bosniak men.

The Accused Jević and Đurić, aware that a forcible transfer of the civilian population was taking place and that the Bosniak men would be summarily executed, ordered the members of the I company to take part in the forcible transfer of the civilian Bosniak population from Potočari, the separation of able-bodied men, their detention in the so-called White House, as a provisional detention facility, and in the subsequent mass killing of the detained Bosniak men at the Kravica cooperative warehouse.

The first-instance verdict of the Court of BiH, delivered on 25 May 2012, found the Accused Duško Jević and Mendeljev Đurić guilty of Genocide, and sentenced them to 35 and 30 years of long-term imprisonment, respectively.

At the same time, the panel acquitted the Accused Neđo Ikonić and Goran Marković of genocide charges (Article 171 a) and b) of the Criminal Code of BiH).